FAYETTEVILLE — Troy Snowden could go from starting the season as an assistant coach to ending it as the head coach of a girls’ state basketball champion.

In mid December, Snowden replaced Karlyn Stephens as East Columbus’ head coach after Stephens took the head softball coaching job at Southeastern Community College.

By all appearances, the transition was seamless.

“I knew we had a good team, just didn’t know how far we would go,” Snowden said. “The team gelled real well and the girls are playing excellent.”

That could be an understatement.

With two double-digit wins followed a close victory over a 28-1 team, the third-seeded Gators (20-5) have advanced to the NCHSAA 1-A East Regional semifinals, where they’ll take on No. 1 seed Lejeune (25-0) tonight at 8:30 p.m. at Crown Arena in Fayetteville.

The winner advances to the regional final at noon Saturday against the winner of the other regional final pitting No. 1 Riverside (28-1) against River Mill Academy (26-3), which play at 7 p.m. tonight.

Snowden, who’s been an assistant for both the boys’ and girls teams for the past four seasons, said the transition “was real smooth” after Stephens left.

“It went real well,” he said during a news conference Monday at the Crown Coliseum, which is adjacent to the Crown Arena. “There was no switch over, no letdown one way or the other (just), ‘We’re going to miss coach Stephens, but coach Troy’s here. We’ll keep on going.’”

And go the Gators did, opening the playoffs with a 51-33 win over Ayden-Grifton followed by a 63-48 victory over Pamlico and a 58-54 win at 28-1 Lakewood on Friday night to advance to the regional semifinals.

“I feel very confident we are where we need to be with our inside game as well as our outside shooters,” Snowden said, although he called the four-point win over Lakewood “an average performance.”

“I’ll take the win,” he added, “but, no, it wasn’t one of our best games.”

The Gators are led by 6-foot junior Lauren Jenkins, who averages 16 points and 9 rebounds a game for a team that goes nine deep and has only two senior starters. One of those seniors is point guard Brittany Hall, who is averaging 12 points and 7 assists a game.

Sophomore Kayla Brown averages 10 points and 5 assists.

Snowden described his team has zone-oriented featuring an aggressive 1-3-1 scheme while on offense the Gators generally use a deliberate attack focused first on getting the ball inside to Jenkins.

“We use our strength, which is inside. We work inside out,” Snowden said. “We have moments where we run, but we’re more a slow down, traditional, pass it around, look inside … type of offense.”

As for his opponent the Devilpups, Snowden said he knew they were led by “very, very good” senior guard Chatori Major, who has scored 30, 29 and 34 points in Lejeune’s three playoff wins, all at home.

And while many foes have tried what Snowden and other coaches call “trick defenses,” including a box-and-one and triangle-and-two, against Major. Snowden said that isn’t in the Gators’ game plan.

“No, we’re going to play our game,” he said. “We’re not going to change anything do anything. No need to confuse the girls at this point in the year.”

Also, he said, a change now might give the players “the wrong impression.”

“S we’re going to stick to our strength,” he said. “As long as we stick to our game plan and we don’t step out of our box, I think we’ll do fine.”